Free Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up by Pamela Des Barres, Michael Des Barres Page A

parents, I decided to be brave and slog back into the acting world. I had already ditched Freda Granite, signing with a family agency called Barskin, and the first job I went out for I snagged; the part of a hippie girl called Apple on a local soap. In 1977 hippies existed only on faraway farfetched farms, but I was playing one right here in Hollywood! I wore long shapeless dresses and acted up a blizzard with a Charles Manson–type guy who wore a pasted-on beard. He was trying to get a tender, nubile Genie Francis to join his mind-controlling commune, and Lady Apple was caught in the middle. Luke eventually came to Laura’s rescue, and all was well at
General Hospital
. They seemed to love my work and hinted about a regular spot on the soap, but it never manifested. I did a day’s shoot on a lifelike half-hour show called
Emergency!
, where I got to languish in a freezing cold hot tub in a skimpy bathing suit, screaming, yelling, and hollering to save my goose-bumped skin. I forget why I couldn’t just climb out of the tub, but I think it had something to do with a stunt dog and a chewed-up live wire.
    My bizzy-dizzy schedule got crazier because our lard-ass landlord liked the way we fixed up our beautiful bungalow and wanted tomove in himself, so I had to tromp all over Hollywood, looking for an appropriate pad in our up-and-down, hand-to-mouth price range. I found a renovated, revised, slick apartment off Fountain Avenue, and after a big yard sale in which we sold all of our cool bamboo, antique lamps, and forties collectibles, Michael and I moved in with a bunch of new modern crap, thinking we would be a couple of contemporary, up-to-the-minute urbanites. Leaving all taste behind, we shopped for massive, tweedy “playpen” couches, Lucite-and-glass end tables, those god-awful chrome lamps that bend all over the place, and large, arty, modern prints in silver and gold frames. I don’t know what got into me.
    Our moderne pad became a second home to Danny Goldberg, who had gotten fed up with the unprofessional and chaotic Zeppelin regime and left his difficult position as Swan Song VP. The three of us got ascloseasthis, and on those long nights when Michael got lost Danny became a spiritual partner, consoling me, praying with me, and holding my hand. He had recently started managing a cosmogirl-singer called Mirabai who trilled nirvanic, chanting melodies for Hilda at those rally-type spiritual meetings in New York. She had just surged out on her own in hopes of spreading the message to the masses but wound up in the arms of Michael’s newest wunderkind producer, Andy Johns, having scary sex and reeling around on large quantities of various illegal substances. It was as if she was trying to do all kinds of really gross earthly things to make up for the lost time she had spent on the heavenly plane. She and I had become sisterlike, so when she tossed Danny and me to the winds like worn-out holy mantras, our hearts splintered together, and we had many mutual commiseration sessions.
    I continued taking classes to perfect my art. I scrubbed disgusting floors and removed globs of germy gum in exchange for private lessons with some nobody slob who couldn’t seem to see my brilliance. The pompous, smelly underdog coach had me stifled in the pit of Pinter and wimping around in
The Seagull
until the sweaty afternoon when I finally threw down my stubby broom and stalked out, my heart as dry as a sun-bleached bone. He told me I would
never
make it as a true ACTRESS. Just like he never made it as a true ACTOR. Ha ha ha. Sob sob sob. I wept openly in the hard daylight on the corner of Spaulding and Sunset until some nice old lady hobbled by and tried to comfort me. I got into my VW and drove back home to the playpen couches and god-awful lamps that bend all over the place.
VI
     
    Oh, my Hero in Heaven, was housekeeping my destiny? Could a normal-formal nine-to-five existence lie ahead? Despite the fact I had my stoned-out